


Forever Isn't For Everyone (Is Forever For You?)

by moments



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Actor!Louis, Alternate Universe, Angst, Lots and lots of angst it's all I know how to write, M/M, No Smut, Sad, There are hints at smut but I never actually write anything ok sorry, writer!harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moments/pseuds/moments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two-hundred-something days later Louis finds himself left with a house full of memories of the boy who left that night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever Isn't For Everyone (Is Forever For You?)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Arctic Monkeys' Snap Out Of It. Writer!Harry and Actor!Louis make me happy, and even though it doesn't come up much in this, I had to include it. I also can't write smut (trust me I've tried), but I put little hints at things in here.

Louis remembers the exact day he gave himself to Harry two hundred and forty seven days ago. It's been thirty five weeks and two days since then, and Louis almost wishes it never happened. Almost.

Day two hundred and thirty five. Louis wanted to help Harry, but knew he couldn't. He knew the control was slipping, and there was nothing to do but watch his boyfriend slip farther and farther and farther...

_Day two hundred and thirty six. He woke up to the sound of Harry's raspy voice singing from the kitchen, and the smell of pancakes on the stove. He dragged himself out of bed and to the kitchen where he found Harry leaned up against the far wall, eyes closed. The corners of his mouth weren't turned up, but then again, they weren't turned down either. A new disk clicked into place on the CD player in the far corner as Louis cautiously stepped over to Harry, brushing his hands up his arms._

_"Wise men say_

_Only fools rush in..."_

_"Dance with me Lou," Harry whispered, eyes still closed._

_Louis placed his arms around his neck and they swayed gently as Elvis hummed from the corner and the food on the stove burned, but neither of them could find enough in them to care. These were Harry's good days, and Louis did everything he could to make them last._

_"...but I can't help falling in love with you."_

He remembers the night Harry came home alone at four in the morning and curled up in a ball on the living room floor with red eyes and alcohol stained clothes until Louis found him there six hours later. He almost got enough sleep to remember the sound of angry words stirred in with broken plates and picture frames. Throw in the wistful look in Harry's eyes and the empty one in Louis' and you've got the ingredients to their argument that morning. All that's left to do is pour it into a pan and shove it into the oven, bake it for half an hour on three hundred and fifty degrees, and you've got a cake or cupcakes or something sweet and sugary. But half of it is missing: gone with a slam of the door and the promise of "sorry."

Everything stayed broken for a while. Louis found himself stepping over shards of ceramic and glass for days and even weeks later. He finds ripped love letters and torn plane tickets in every corner and wills himself to let go.

(He catches sight of world renowned writer Harry Styles posed in front of the Eiffel Tower on the cover of a magazine when he hauls himself out for groceries, and quickly decides it might be better to starve to death.)

-

Louis wonders how a conversation would go if they were to try again.

"I'll be yours again, if you'll have me that is."

"I'll always have you Lou..."

-

He finds a reminder in his email for the audition he has on Saturday- some big league theater production that promises to pay well, and Louis knows he should be lucky enough to even have scored the opportunity.

Saturday morning he's sitting at the kitchen table pulling his shoes on. The sun is barely shining in the pale morning light, but he's convinced himself it's a new day. New things can happen. He almost makes it to the door before he remembers last time.

_They were sitting in the hallway between their room and the living room. It was eleven at night and they had a half empty bottle of red wine seated between them while both of them stared hungrily into the other's eyes. It was Harry who had knocked his forehead against Louis' and smiled sleepily against his lips before reaching down for the bottle and tilting his head back. Louis had eagerly pressed his lips to Harry's, chasing the taste of the wine and everything that had caused him to fall for this boy._

_They'd fallen asleep curled around each other in the hallway after a long night of soft kisses, and Louis had headed out with a sore neck and a scarf to cover up the red marks on his neck. He didn't want to look unprofessional in front of people that were dangling an opportunity in front of him._

_He hadn't gotten the part, but he still had Harry._

This time, he doesn't get as far as the door. He's a mere inches before he has to brace himself against the wall, and by that point he's sitting with his back against the wall, not quite the same position as that night, but close enough for him to cry for the first time since Harry left.

He falls asleep on the floor and doesn't wake up until the clouds have rolled in and the sky is dark. His neck hurts and he doesn't have anyone to massage out the knot that's forming (he doesn't have anyone to loosen the knot in his stomach either). His bed will be more comfortable either way, so he forces his shoes off and collapses the same way he did after Harry had eagerly sucked him off that night, only this time he doesn't fall asleep with arms around him and curls tickling his neck.

Louis finally finds his phone where it was caught in between the couch and the wall after he threw it a few weeks ago. He plugs it in and leaves it alone for a few hours, not wanting to have to face all the screaming voices he knows lay on the other side of the screen.  Sure, he'd gone out from time to time to get food, and he even managed to grab hold of a job at the deli on the corner. It pays barely, but Louis doesn't need much anymore. He tells himself he's doing better, because he is. He's managing on his own. There's safety in isolation.

His hands are shaking by the time he lets himself look at his phone. Harry has called him three times, left two texts, one voicemail, and that's it. Louis wants to feel hurt, but mostly he wants to break everything in sight. He deletes the texts without reading them and leaves the voicemail for later. He presses the power button on his phone and settles to let it charge while it’s off. No one needs to reach him. No one needs him at all. (Harry does, but Louis won’t let himself believe that)

_Day one hundred and twenty four. The cool winter air was blowing in gently from the open window across the room, and Harry and Louis sat facing each other on the kitchen floor. Louis remembers being weighed down by one of Harry’s jumpers hanging off his shoulders, but he was too warm and sated to care about anything except the boy in front of him. Harry sat across from him, their knees bumping as he scooted himself closer to Louis and placed a gentle kiss to his lips. There hadn’t been wine this time, but he figured it probably would have been the first thing knocked over when Harry pulled Louis into his lap for better access to his neck._

_“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” Harry had whispered against his lips._

_Louis had smirked and quietly replied with a cheeky, “it’s snowing out.”_

_“You make me happy when skies are gray.”_

_“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you,” Louis softly sang back._

_“Please don’t take my sunshine away…”_

The kitchen holds the most memories. It’s funny how that works out, because when he thinks about, Louis never expected to look at the table and remember the time he’d bent Harry over it and fucked into him quickly one night after Harry came back from having dinner with friends, or that cold gray afternoon where they sang to each other about sunshine in the winter. He doesn’t want to look at the stove and remember all the meals they’d cooked together (Harry did most of the cooking, Louis did most of the taste-testing), or open the fridge and see all of Harry’s favorite food still there, even weeks later, or stare out the window and wonder where in the world Harry could be at that very moment.

He secretly wonders when he started remembering all the fond moments as ones he could be forget, and finds he doesn’t know if it was before or after that day.

They were together less than a year, but he’d already known Harry was it for him. He just wishes on whatever false hope still remains, that even if Harry is out there somewhere with someone else, or even with the boy he found better than Louis, that he’s happy.

Louis resolves in dragging himself to bed and makes a mental note to look to buy new furniture sometime in the next few years.

-

He wakes up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night and instantly sits upright, not yet opening his eyes, but trying to catch his breath.

He should have known better than to open them when he finally does, and finds vacant green ones staring back at him. (He also knows he should have changed the locks, but that’s the last thought running through his mind.)

“Lou?” Harry whispers, like he’s testing the waters, but it’s been so long and he knows Louis won’t be able to fall asleep without him after this.

Louis just groans and throws his head back against his pillow, reaching down to grab his comforter and throw it over his head. Maybe if it could keep the monsters away when he was little, it can keep away the monster his mind has turned Harry into.

“Please,” he hears Harry whisper from just outside his blanket, and he knows he’s been lucky enough to have made it this far without Louis. (Louis also knows that Harry made it twenty-something years without him, and therefore should be able to make it another twenty-something before truly cracking, but he longs for Harry in his entirety, and knows he won’t be able to say no.)

The feel of the blankets being pushed back and the bed dipping beside him as Harry climbs under should all be warning signals that force Louis up and out of bed and as far away from him as possible, but it’s the middle of the night and he can’t find the strength to do anything but share his body heat with the boy who’s finally in his rightful spot beside him.

Most of all, he knows he won’t forgive Harry that easily, but he also knows neither of them will be able to sleep without their legs tangled together and their bodies encased in the same blankets. He made it this far, so maybe, just this once, Louis can go back to letting himself fall asleep wrapped in Harry’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Take a shot every time I start a sentence with "he" "his" or "Louis" and you'll have alcohol poisoning less than halfway through.
> 
> Find me on twitter @disasterstyles !!!


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